Forza Horizon 3 - Car collecting down under

Only works with digital copies.

But yes, if you find a discounted code for the xbox one digital version on some web site, that would also grant you the PC version, and vice versa.

Ok, finally did it. That second video was helpful, thanks for posting it.

All stuff done now except some championships. And the god damn counter tells me I did 62 out of 63 exhibitions, but that is wrong since I did all of them. Common problem from what I see on google, yet still unfixed.

Anyway, I would like to continue in Blizzard Mountain and Hot Wheels, but for that insane price MS can stuff it. Maybe on Christmas they could drop the price by generous 5% or so.

BM was 50% off in March, and I’m sure it will be on sale again. Same with HW at one point, but that was just released.

Word of warning - I bought the expansion pass over the weekend, and while the Hot Wheels expansion is great, I’ve hit a horrendous bug that apparently is pretty widespread on PC. Ever since the Hot Wheels expansion came out, many people including myself have been unable to get to Blizzard Mountain at all. It just sits at the loading screen forever.

So if you have BM now, maybe finish that before installing HW.

I’m discovering the Forza series now that it’s on PC, and I’m liking it!

First I tried the demo of Forza 7 a month ago and liked it. A good balance between simulation and arcade (at least, in my settings), eye-popping graphics, enjoyable tracks. Later I discovered the Forza 6 Apex on pc, which is nice, a free version with 7 tracks and a pair of dozens vehicles. Graphics still hold up perfectly as it isn’t as old, and it’s a looker at 4k/60 fps. I loved the Rio de Janeiro track. I always loved racing games in colorful, full of life scenarios, I think since I was a kid playing NFS2. Racing close to the blue sea, or between red deserts, hot-air balloons around, etc.

Finally I’ve been playing Forza Horizon 3 this weekend and I’m loving it. It’s controls awesomely, arcade but still with more nuance than say, Need for Speed. It looks great, and here I have to add I’m a graphics whore for racing games, it’s an important factor for me (even if I can play Dominions or a shooter from the 90s, for racing games is different). The game is beautiful, in both technically and artistically. It’s a joy to look at the sunset while racing through the cliffs or rushing through a flower field, or through the sleek skyline of the city.

Speaking of, I also appreciate the variety of the environments and the slightly exotic setting, something I dislike from some open world racing games is how they can be big, but only have 1 or 2 ‘settings’ for the environment, unlike track based racing games where every track is usually a bit more unique.
I have seen the coast part, the rainforest part, the fields and farms part, the arid part, the city part, the normal forest part, and I know there is an expansion with a nice looking snowy mountain.

Although, it ins’t very optimized on PC. It runs mainly on a single thread (!), so the cpu speed of a single core is a determinant factor for the framerate.
A i7 4770k @3.7ghz was moving the game at 35-45 fps. Not acceptable. I started changing the resolution and detail, and I noticed how not only lowering stuff barely helped, also increasing the resolution was giving me still the same results. That’s a indication of cpu-bounded game.
I changed the OC to 4.2 ghz and baam!, smooth 60 fps gameplay, at 1600p, MSAAx4, High details.

I think the execution of ‘modern racing festival’ theme is less cringe inducing than in other racing games with the same theme, and here at least they play around with the concept in the gameplay too with interesting results (ie. first race is against a chopper). Sometimes the comments of the… uh… radio operators who call you? are funny.

I’m also enjoying the division between on-road activities (speed traps, jumps, collecting boards, abandoned cars) and the real races (official ones, street races, etc), and the asphalt vs country affairs. Again good variety in the game. Car variety is also good, it’s fun from time to time to use a slow classic car and race against cars of similar types.

The default difficulty is appropiate for a casual racing player like me, I usually end up between first and fourth place in races on the first attempt, I suppose later will be a bit harder.

In summary, I think it’s the open world racing game I played I’m enjoying the most. Also, because I haven’t player FH1 or FH2, I’m not burned out of this particular style :).

I have i5 2500K granddad at 4ghz and has always ran at stable 60fps for me. Originally with high preset, but since the latest optimization patch, even on ultra. That is with gtx1070 and 8GB.

And yeah, it is an amazing game, works beautifully with a wheel too, but I really wish the world was bigger. Crew still has an edge on that (and it is varied too, even more so).

The physics with all assists off is just the best though. Perfect combo of sim+arcade.

I can’t wait for Crew 2 and FH4.

The biggest problem with Forza is their Windows Store + UWP exclusivity. That just flat out sucks ass.

Noob question: How the drivatar thing works? Do I have to add all of you as friends on the Xbox app to have your drivatars? Is there a faster option like a clan to join up?

Though in any case, I will stop FH3 for now, as I will start Destiny 2 today…

?2345

You can join a club/clan/guild which can be fun. You need friends to have them as drivatars.

…and do we have an official xbox gamertag thread or something?

There was a link to a spreadsheet somewhere but I don’t know it off hand. Also guilds are called clubs, couldnt find a QT3 one which was a surprise.

It’s a pity that this game IS SO FUCKING CRASHY on the pc version. It seems it wasn’t that way when it was released, but one of the later updates around the expansions made the game super unstable for lots of people. Like me. I haven’t seen a game with these problems in the last five years.

Oh no, it surely WAS that crash-prone on PC on release. So was Forza 7 a few weeks ago.

Diego

Was it? Horizon 3 never crashed on me. I played it a lot on PC and Xbox, swapping back and forth, my saves automagically transferring between the two. The only problem I had on the PC version is it was very CPU constrainted, and I have an original i5 from 2009, so my framerate would dip well below 30, but it was super smooth on the Xbox, which is why I preferred playing it there instead.

Yeah, I never had crash issues on PC. I had a terrible bug with the season pass which meant I couldn’t play the mountain DLC for weeks until they patched it, but other than that it was a pretty smooth experience.

Had zero issue with either on my pc.

Wow. Maybe very hardware or configuration specific. Was a mess for me at launch but It eventually cleared up with updates.

I suppose I have to do a follow up. I could fix my problems, it was the OC of my cpu. Despite I already tried to lower it before to see if it was affecting FH3, and despite running fine for other four games, when I reset totally my BIOS configuration and OC again with another values, it could fix the instability in the game.

Hey guys, what’s up with the Groove radio station? I thought I heard something about the online component of it going away (in rather typical Microsoft tradition)–does that mean that the Groove radio station functionality is no more?

It works for me, but I stream my own music stored on OneDrive, which is how I’ve always used Groove on my Xbox. No idea about subscription content.

Edit: Oh yea, and if you want to stream from your OneDrive you have to go into Audio Settings in-game and select a pre-made playlist you’ve already created in Groove.